Goodnight Blackbird (11 page)

The dream was about as no-frills, bare-bones as you could get—just his room bathed in the moonlight. There was a feminine presence he couldn't seem to focus on. The woman was simply the sum of many blurry, tantalizing fragments. The suggestion of long dark hair, smooth blue-white skin, the glittering pool of an eye catching the moonlight. The sweet aroma of some girlish shampoo with a melon undertone. But every time he tried to focus his bleary, sleepy gaze on her she seemed to shimmer and fade into the moonlight like dissipating smoke. It was as if he were trying to peer in at someone from behind rain-streaked glass.

The fragmented woman seemed to be standing beside his bed, and Darren felt the lightest touch of fingers smoothing the hair at his temples, lingering on his cheek.
Jacqueline
, he thought, letting himself slip a little further back into the dream state. He felt himself reaching out to the dream figure beside the bed and his fingers intertwined with the woman's fingers. It was like holding a spider's web. He pulled her towards the bed. She reached out her arms for him and he folded his arms around her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they were two components of a single system finally locked together.
This is what it's supposed to be like
, he thought.

She kissed him. Her touch was faint, feathery—he was immersed in the spider's web now. The feather-touches on his lips became more urgent, heavier, more rhythmic.
Love you, love you, love you
, she seemed to be saying, although he didn't hear the words, they simply appeared in his mind as breathy little whispers.

His hands slid down her slender curves and he still couldn't focus on any one part of her for more than a half-second before she seemed to fade. But he didn't really need to see her clearly to understand that this wasn't Jacqueline; the figure's smooth, taut skin was much more youthful, shockingly youthful, and her fragrant shampoo was something a teen girl would favor. She seemed to intuit some hesitancy on his part and she held him more closely, whispering,
It's all right. I'm here. Love you. Whatever you need I'll give. Won't hurt. Just love. Love you, love you
.

Can't
, he said. Was he speaking, or was this all just thought-speak? It was hard to tell.
Can't
, Darren said/thought again, and it was a transparent lie, because the sturdiness of the erection in his boxers was damning evidence that he could. What he meant to say was that he shouldn't—she was dangerous. She made threats. She threw things. Still his hands caressed her soft skin, and she folded her small hand around his and guided it around her welcoming body, telling him,
I don't hurt. No hurt. Love. You can be happy
. Blue-white moonlight fell upon slender shoulders, upon the swell of a breast, upon a flawless, milk-colored thigh. She would have been a beautiful woman, Darren knew; had she lived she would have been lovely. When she smiled at you it would feel like standing in sunlight. This was what the world had lost.

Why do you love me,
he asked.
Why don't you go on, you don't belong here.

Love you
, she said. She seemed to cling to him more tightly, hugging him.
Always kind. We're the same. Don't you feel it?

You don't belong here
, he said again. But the light touch of her fingers all over him was hypnotic, tender, warm, nurturing, healing. He did not want to stop touching her, and she did not want to stop touching him. Her breathy whispers took on a slightly more frantic, pained tone. It took him a moment to understand that she was crying—whether she was crying because of the power of her feelings or crying for the loss of her life, Darren did not know.

Would have made a nice home for you
, she said.
So sweet, always.
Her hand drifted under his t-shirt, groping for his heart, then it slid lower.
Would have been kind to me, you would have been sweet. Gentle heart.
The softness of her hair against his cheek was like the warm grass in late summer, and her aromas were so soothing and her grip so fierce that he couldn't have let go of her even if he had wanted to, and he didn't want to, because she was lost and needed someone, something to cling to in the water, and he had learned long ago that this was what he was good at—the compassion, the consolation, the shoulder to cry on. This was the only currency he had in his wallet. She had died before she had ever truly lived—didn't she deserve some reparation for that? Didn't she deserve to have someone hold her and be sweet to her and give her some taste of the life that had been stolen from her?

His hand slid, caressed, doing things his eyes were too bashful to see, and her breathing became a series of labored, rhythmic sighs. His fingers danced across the china-white dune of one cool thigh, and her lips greedily sucked at his own, and he caressed, caressed, until her weeping stopped and she seemed to throb in his arms, crying out so quietly that it was little more than a relieved exhalation, and he saw in one gleaming, jewel-like eye such a miserable happiness, such a happy misery—a drowsy drunkenness and gratitude, a peaceful ecstatic serenity and exhaustion.

Waiting so long,
she said.
Gentle heart.

Shhh,
he said.
It's all right.

Gentle heart
, she whispered again, but it wasn't his heart that she was touching now. Her fingers, as insubstantial as the faintest of breezes, drifted into his shorts, and there was only the barest suggestion of friction as she explored and lingered and stroked and teased, and again Darren felt a brief hesitancy and she seemed to pick up on this because she said,
Please. Let me. I don't hurt. No hurt. Love only. See? Just love
.

Looking into the brown ponds of her eyes before they fragmented and dissolved, he saw a longing and loneliness and weariness that were much like his own—the same melody played in a different key, a different tempo. Her eyes told him that she knew him and wanted to heal him, fill in all the empty spaces in his life. His breathing was now becoming ragged and he buried his face in her warm hair while he felt her fingers on him below, so ghostly and so delicate that they were barely touching him at all, merely drifting across his skin like a hand passing over the strings of a harp, drawing forth music by simply disturbing the air.

God
, he said, and the surge of ecstatic biological music began, a silent, warm music that poured wave-like from him, and she clung to him while it happened, while the golden warmth flooded out of him, an abundant fountain of warmth and life, the life that had been denied her, now it was out and she felt it, baptized herself in it, and she kissed him and held him as strongly as he was holding her and she whispered to him, over and over again,
Gentle heart. Gentle heart
.

J
uly 16.

Jacqueline arrived at Marymount Cemetery around noon. Kevin had already been there—the half-dozen pink roses at the base of the headstone were a trademark of his.

Jacqueline brought no flowers. She didn't think Michelle would care one way or another. The day was overcast and humid, with charcoal-grey storm clouds festering in the east. She would stay ten minutes, no longer. She was supposed to meet the HR woman at Northeast Aerospace and fill out some forms around two. She wanted to make sure she had enough time to shower and change.

What a difference a few years could make. In past years, when the anniversary of Michelle's death loomed on the calendar, Jacqueline would feel its approach like the onset of a migraine. In the days leading up to it she'd go through her own personal stations of the Cross: her mood would become grim (July 12), then wistful (July 13), sluggish and hopeless (July 14), weepy and overstressed (July 15), and then on D-Day everything would annoy her and send her into profanity-laden rages or fits of morose, half-catatonic staring. Kevin, too, would become flustered and short-tempered during this time, but that was most likely from playing the role of long-suffering psychological case worker for his nutjob of a wife.

But now July 16 seemed to have lost some of its cancerous sting. It was still a bad day, a day full of shadows and dark thoughts, but its appearance on the calendar was sobering in a more subdued way. Like a root canal appointment.

Pretty soon she would probably stop visiting Michelle's grave on this day. She'd already stopped coming on Michelle's birthday and on Christmas, although Kevin still visited. In fact, Kevin came by two or three times a month. Funny how that worked—men were supposed to be the insensitive ones. Now it was Jacqueline who just wanted to put in her obligatory ten minutes and get the hell out.

And why not? Michelle wasn't really here, was she? Her remains were here, but if the animating force or soul of Michelle Prentiss was anywhere now, it was back at the house. Darren kept trying to convince her that it wasn't necessarily the house Michelle was tied to, like a classical
genius loci
, it was Jacqueline herself. But she was having a hard time believing that. Darren was probably just trying to cushion the inevitable blow of having the house taken from her. The house did seem to be Michelle's final resting place; it had snared Michelle's energy and kept her trapped between this world and the next, a spider's web made of drywall and high-end Italian tile.

The headstone was pink marble. Michelle Rachael Prentiss, May 7 1997—July 16 2003. "One More Angel In Heaven."

Jacqueline had always hated that "one more angel" dreck. She would have preferred just the name and the dates, but Kevin insisted on putting something else there, something that would perfectly capture his titanic love, grief and heartbreak. But Kevin wasn't a profound man by nature, and his efforts to wring timeless poetry from the storms of tragic mischance more resembled what you'd find lurking inside a card from Hallmark's $.99 budget line. It was somewhat better than the heaps of convoluted and incomprehensible Biblical verses Kevin's mom had wanted on the stone, however. Thank God Jacqueline had put the kibosh on that.

Two graves away, an old man knelt at a headstone, plucking away bits of crabgrass and weeds. He wore a faded checkered flannel shirt and a battered ballcap that had what Jacqueline at first thought was the red and blue logo from the Obama campaign. That made her do a double-take. There weren't many elderly white men who had pulled the lever for the skinny community organizer from Chicago. Upon closer inspection, though, she saw that the logo said Radco Vending Supply.

The old man caught her looking and nodded to her. "Afternoon," he said.

She nodded to him just as the sky politely cleared its throat with a soft rumble of thunder. The squadron of pigeons lining the nearby telephone wires took flight, their wings creating a counterpoint rumble.

The old man looked at the sky. "Guess that's my cue to skedaddle." He had an aluminum cane with him, but he still had difficulty getting back on his feet. Jacqueline went over and awkwardly lent him a hand.

"Appreciate it, miss. Wouldn't know it to look at me now but I was the fittest stud in my army platoon. Could run a mile in six minutes flat and not even break a sweat."

"A military man."

"Now I'm just the old guy who can't remember where he parked at Wal-Mart."

"Visiting someone special?"

The old man took off his cap and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "My son," he said. They began walking down the winding asphalt path to the parking lot. "Died in '85. Bone cancer." He wagged his head. "Wasn't even nineteen."

"I'm sorry."

The old man shrugged. "He'd be past forty today. Blows my mind. The time passing, that is. Probably would've been married, had himself a couple kids, some hotshot teaching job. He was an intellectual, Brian was. Fascinated by animals and biology and DNA and mitochondria and all that stuff I slept through when I was in school." The old man's face grew momentarily bitter. "God must have the sense of humor of a rapist, though. Fucking biology killed him. Pardon the language."

"I say much worse."

"You visiting a parent?"

Jacqueline hesitated a moment before answering. "My daughter."

The old man was quiet for a few steps. Finally he said, "Bet you were a hell of a mom."

A weak smile came to Jacqueline's lips but it felt more like an irritated sneer. "Michelle could've done better, I'm sure."

"Pretty name—Michelle. What was she like?"

It wasn't as easy a question to answer as some people might've thought. Michelle had died before her personality had truly gelled. Jacqueline was often bewildered by her daughter—one day Michelle would be the sweet, obedient dream-child, the next she'd be cranky and contentious, turning bath time into a wailing, screaming horror, as if she were being burned alive. In other words, a typical child. But the jury was still out as to what kind of person she would have ultimately become. Introvert? Extrovert? A superficial bundle of giggles and neuroses, bouncing from one unsuitable boyfriend to another? An aloof, driven honors student with a cutting sense of humor?

No one would ever know.

"She was bold," Jacqueline found herself saying. "She might have been quiet and shy a lot of times, but she had an adventurous streak. We had one of those children's trampolines for a while. She would just bounce on that thing for hours, and she'd always jump on it as hard as she could. She kept trying to fling herself as far into the air as she could. We had to tell her to stop because she would've probably fallen off and gotten a concussion. But she loved it. She screamed like the devil when we took it away. She had an iron will." It felt strange to put it that way. When Jacqueline and Kevin would reminisce about her, the stories usually centered on things like her intense shyness around adults, or the precious names she gave her stuffed animals (Mr. Yellow Bird, Timmy the Happy Monkey, Grouchy Frog). But these stories seemed strangely impersonal—they could have applied to any thousand American kids.
She had an iron will
. It was the first time Jacqueline had described Michelle in those terms. With those words, Jacqueline felt as though she had gotten a glimpse of how the adult Michelle would have turned out. Polite, quiet, but singleminded if she had a goal and God help you if you got in her way.

"Sounds like she would've been a real firecracker," the old man said.

"Maybe. Or maybe she would've turned out like me."

"That so bad?"

She shrugged. "I was a quiet kid, but I used to feel pretty ferocious inside. Powerful. Self-contained. If I wanted something, watch out. But over the years I guess I turned into something else."

"What?"

"A people-pleaser. A girl who did everything her friends were doing. Just another flighty chick taking the
Cosmo
quiz."

The old man didn't reply. They had come to the gravel parking lot.

"This probably makes me sound heartless," Jacqueline said, "but I wish I felt worse today. It's the anniversary of her death, and mostly I'm just thinking about running errands. It's horrible."

"No. It means you're finally getting on with things. It means you're surviving. Hell, half the time I come here I'm thinking about what I ought to heat up for dinner, or if I can put off my knee surgery another few months. I've done my share of crying for Brian, don't get me wrong. But like my mother used to say, eventually the pain stops."

"I wish the guilt would stop."

"It will. You ain't heartless, missy. You're healing."